Students get head start in engineering

White Oak High School is now giving students a head start in the engineering industry with the help of a national certification in the Project Lead the Way program.

ANIESA HOLMES Daily News Staff

White Oak High School is now giving students a head start in the engineering industry with the help of a national certification in the Project Lead the Way program.

Project Lead the Way allows students to earn college credits for some high school engineering courses. Although the program is active in other high schools in the Onslow County School System including Jacksonville, Richlands, and Swansboro, White Oak is the first in the district to become certified.

Now in its second year of offering a full four course complement of classes, there are currently 147 students enrolled in the program.

“As a math teacher, the one question you always get is ‘Where am I going to use this? One of the first things I tell my kids is any student who goes through my classes will never has to ask that question again,” said Marshall Smith, teacher for Project Lead the Way. “You see the relevance of what you’re being educated in early on.”

Teachers must go through an intensive two-week professional development course during the summer, which involves class time, homework, projects and tutoring. Smith has gone through four trainings and teaches Introduction to Engineering and Design Development, Principals of Engineering and Digital Electronics. Teacher Shannon Ashley has also gone through one training session and teaches Principals of Engineering.

These classes delve into a variety of topics in engineering and design. Through this certification students enrolled in the program are eligible to earn college credit and meet all requirements for the student’s senior project. Some of projects students that work on include three dimensional modeling, robotics, thermodynamics, digital electronics and building circuit boards.

“Anything that they make on the computer, we can actually print in the classroom,” Smith said.

Classes are also designed to be rigorous and relevant to 21st century learners through the use of project based learning and cutting edge technologies, learning the systems of thought and processes of problem solving real world engineers use to tackle modern day problems.

“Engineers are everywhere,” Smith said. “By definition, an engineer is someone who applies math and science to real world problems.”

Project Lead the Way also helps to tackle the decline of students who drop out of college engineering programs before graduating. Earlier data has shown that students in the program are better prepared for challenges that post secondary education poses.

“Our engineering force is silver right now, with over half of American engineers being over the age of 55,” Smith said. “We currently don’t have enough American engineers coming out of our schools right now to fill those positions that are about to be opened after the retiring of our baby boomers.”

Through nearby military bases and companies, Smith hopes to take classes on more field trip opportunities to see engineering at work in the community. Students like 16-year-old junior Anthony Christoff and 15-year-old sophomore Marisa Coltabaugh are already developing plans to use their skills in the workforce one day.

“I find math very easy and I like building with my hands,” Anthony said. “I would like to go toward mechanical engineering and build engines and cars.”

Marisa anticipates studying environmental or architectural engineering in college and plans to design and build her own home. She finds the program challenging, but uses it to get more involved in activities like the newly established engineering club.

“Sometimes looking at something on a computer and trying to mimic it on the CAD program can be a challenge,” she said.

Another advantage that Smith observed is the chance to level out gender and racial gaps in the engineering field.

“We’ve had a lot more boys than girls take the series of classes, but as the series has grown the girls have taken to it,” Smith said. “We have higher percentage of females in the lower level classes than last year. With race there’s that same discrepancy nationwide, but we have overcome that discrepancy at White Oak.”